How To Install VMware Tools on Windows

You can use VMware Tools to enhance the performance of the virtual machines running as the guest operating systems and improve the virtual machine management. However, the guest operating systems can run without VMware Tools, but some of the VMware features, such as sharing files between host and guest operating system using the Shared Folders feature and Drag-and-drop features, will not be available until you install the latest version of VMware Tools. In order to use the VMware tools, first, you need to download VMware tools. You can download VMware tools from the VMware’s official website free of cost. VMware tools are available for both the Linux and Windows platforms. In this post, we will explain how to download and install VMware Tools on Windows operating systems. Visit the following link to download the latest version of VMware Tools for Windows.

Once, you have downloaded the VMware Tools, you can install VMware Tools either using the Windows Easy Install feature or you can install it manually.

For the most of supported Windows guest operating systems, VMware tools are automatically installed with the installation of the guest operating system. However, sometimes you may need to perform the manual installation.

Install VMware Tools Manually

To install VMware Tools on Windows VMs manually, you need to perform the following steps:

On the Workstation Player’s menu bar, click Player, select Manage, and then select Install VMware Tools. Note: If an earlier version of VMware Tools is already installed, the menu item will be as Update VMware Tools.

When the Software Updates dialog box displays, click Download and Install. The downloading process will be started, click Details to monitor the downloading process. Needless to say, the downloading time depends on the speed of your Internet connection. Let complete the downloading process.

Once the VMware Tools are downloaded, the VMware Tools installation process will be started automatically. If it is not started automatically, launch it manually by just double-clicking the VMware Tools setup.exe file.

Navigate to the Choose Setup Type page, select either of the three options and then click Next. If you are not sure which option you should choose, the best way to accept the default selection. However, for the full functionality, select the Complete option.

On the rest of the pages, just follow the on-screen instructions and complete the installation process. Reboot the virtual machine once the installation is done.

That’s all you need to do download and install VMware Tools on Windows virtual machines. Hope, you enjoyed it.